


Topics in Practical Aerodynamics

by sophiagratia



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/F, Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-16
Updated: 2011-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-14 20:03:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/152940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophiagratia/pseuds/sophiagratia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Endgame. Kathryn builds a flying machine. See also: English countryside, rare books, aviator goggles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Topics in Practical Aerodynamics

**Author's Note:**

> See also this [lovely illustration](http://pics.livejournal.com/sophia_gratia/pic/00002tg5) by [abydos_dork](http://abydos-dork.livejournal.com).

For the sixth time in as many mornings, Kathryn Janeway slumped painfully to the ground and winced, tugging a medical tricorder and a dermal regenerator from her kit belt. At least she hadn’t broken anything. This time. Shouldering sweat from her eye, she took a cautious breath. Yesterday’s six cracked ribs gave a gentle complaint, but no more. She ran the regenerator over the gash in her knee. Inexpertly. There’d be a scar. But that was a problem for later.

She sighed and lay back in the long grass. A fine, bright morning. The sun warm on her face, a woodsmoke-smelling breeze cool, drying her sweat, teasing her hair. She propped herself on her elbows, hissing at new evidence of a previously unnoticed injury. She ignored it. At least this morning she had a view to consider around the edges of her various aches. Yesterday she’d found herself upside down in a tree and unable to move for nearly an hour. And there had been the misadventure in the cherry orchard, an indignity she tried not to consider. At least she’d had treats to bring home in the afternoon to forestall the otherwise daily scolding she received for the severity and variety of her injuries. But here, she had a view. Like an illumination in an ancient manuscript, the soft, domesticated English hills rolled down to the sea. Sheep grazed idly; a dog barked in the far distance. A nearby farmhouse the source of the woodsmoke; the village a few miles off looking sleepy. Hedgerows neatly winding, poplars lining the road far below.

It was impossible. A caricature of itself. Like something out of one of Tom Paris’s holonovels. And yet here she was. Kathryn groaned, rising tentatively from the earth – yes, god help her, it was real enough. More or less convinced that she’d be stable on her feet, she turned to assess the rest of the damage.

‘Christ in a warp core,’ she growled, closing her eyes against the carnage.

One wing lay several hundred metres off, sickeningly bent, and Kathryn felt the sight of it like the sight of a broken bone. Another wing, impaled on its own struts, sagged pathetically from the delicate duranium fuselage. The latter might be salvageable – that was a first. Even the seats were intact, and the delicate levers and pedals. Gasping as she tried to ease a kink out of her lower back, Kathryn had difficulty considering that an accomplishment.

Securing her belt, cautiously shouldering her pack, she set off on the long walk home.

*

Eyes shielded against the setting sun, Kathryn paused at the front gate to compose herself, determined not to totter through the door like a woman halfway to her grave. For one thing, she knew that if she did, someone might just help her the rest of the way there. And, too, there was her dignity to consider.

‘For the love of all things holy,’ came a disapproving voice from the direction of the garden. Well. That was short-lived.

‘I’m all right, Beverly,’ she called. ‘Ah. Mostly.’

For the sixth time in as many days, Beverly rolled her eyes, helped Kathryn inside, and sat her down at the kitchen table. Swift fingers fetching tricorder and hand-scanner from Kathryn’s belt, she located and repaired the faults of Kathryn’s attempt at self-healing – rather less gently today than previously, Kathryn observed. And for the sixth time in as many days, she was left with nothing to do but to resign herself to treatment and to contemplating the significance of Beverly’s wry half-smile.

She stretched contentedly when the procedure was over. ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ she said brightly, flashing a smile as she leapt to her feet. ‘Good as new. Now. Coffee.’ After a moment’s hovering over the French press, Kathryn selected the little moka pot and set to work. She could feel Beverly watching her from where she leaned against the refrigerator, arms crossed and still half-smiling, damn her. Kathryn let herself enjoy it – with her back turned, Beverly couldn’t see her blush, and Kathryn could happily deny to herself that she’d done any such thing. She knew what she looked like, her strong arms shaded with sweat and grime, her tank clinging to her back, revealing the lines of the shoulder blades she was so proud of, her efficient hands performing out of muscle-memory alone this simple, daily task. She knew what she looked like and she enjoyed being watched. If that was arrogance, well, to hell with it.

‘So,’ came a voice that matched its owner’s wry smile perfectly. ‘How long today?’ Kathryn flipped a dial on the stove, bent to examine the height of the flame.

‘Damn near ten minutes. Almost as many miles.’ She straightened. ‘Even planned a landing, for a change. Hit an updraft on my way down, though, and it blew me way off course. Another one took a bloody wing off. How’s that for shoddy workmanship?’ Leaning against the counter, she inclined her head, suddenly feeling her exhaustion and disappointment. But she looked up at Beverly through her eyelashes all the same, and winked. ‘But I think I’ll have it right by tomorrow.’

‘Don’t even think about it.’ Beverly’s tone was deadly earnest. But Kathryn watched her eyes. Playful? Hard to tell.

‘And don’t _you_ make me pull rank, Doctor.’ The eyes flashed. Hard to tell.

‘Yes, _sir_. But have mercy, Admiral.’ The wry lips into a pout. And the eyes definitely playful. ‘Think of what will happen to my career when I transport back to HQ, carrying the body of Starfleet’s most decorated officer, broken beyond repair even by my legendary hands.’ She steepled the fingertips of those legendary hands against her lips in a gesture Kathryn could only term suggestive. It had been the promise of that playfulness that had made Kathryn accept Beverly’s invitation to this house. She was beginning to be very relieved that she hadn’t misread it.

‘Sit down, Doctor,’ she ordered curtly, ‘and drink your coffee.’ She passed Beverly a demitasse of aromatic espresso, with just a dollop of heavy cream. Something suddenly warm in her chest, as she watched Beverly accept, wrapping long fingers around the cup, lifting it, closing her eyes to inhale deeply. Something so domestic, so familiar. She made this woman coffee every day. She didn’t have to ask how to prepare it. Simple facts, one, two, and now this warmth, three. Well then.

They settled quietly at the distressed birchwood table, another flash of Beverly’s eyes telling Kathryn the argument would begin again tomorrow morning. But for the present, the doctor just curled her knees to her chest, rested her bare feet against the table’s edge, and took up the padd she’d left there. Kathryn watched her for a moment. Raising her cup halfway to her lips and forgetting it, already lost in her work. Absently brushing a bright shock of hair from her cheek. Her elegant feet. Kathryn shook her head, sliding toward herself a pile of old aeronautical manuals – honest-to-god leaves and boards, bless them – and set to the problem of keeping her wings on her plane.

*

Kathryn had been vaguely intrigued when the chief of Starfleet Medical had volunteered to oversee the integration of _Voyager_ ’s medical database into Starfleet’s. She knew Beverly Crusher vaguely by reputation, recalled dimly a handful of exobiology lectures from her Academy days. She watched with approval, though largely from a distance, as Crusher efficiently organized and deployed research teams, monitored the progress of a few dozen labs, established and monitored further teams to synthesize the results, constructed and staffed still more laboratories to turn those results to therapeutic applications. Kathryn made a habit of visiting Medical every six months or so – though always as Admiral Janeway, always with the object of filing an official inspection report. Her nostalgia for _Voyager_ sustained her interest, but she spared little thought for the program’s administrator.

Oh, Crusher was capable enough. Devoted. Driven. Brilliant. But bland, Kathryn thought. For all the axioms regarding redheads, there was little enough fire behind those arch, aristocratic features.

She knew she had a reputation for stubbornness –  _pig-headed_ was Chakotay’s politest term for it – but whatever anyone said, Kathryn Janeway enjoyed an opportunity to be proven wrong. Still, it was a testament to her tenacity in this case that it took her half a decade to notice.

To notice that Beverly Crusher’s strict observance of protocol had always been subtly, and became increasingly, parodic. The day Admiral Janeway realized she was being _mocked_ by the semiannual formal salute in Medical’s transport bay, she sucked in her cheeks, propped a hand on her hip, and bowed her head laughing in spite of herself. ‘Thank _god_ ,’ Crusher had breathed dryly. ‘With respect, sir, I was beginning to think you might be an android.’

Half a decade to notice that Beverly Crusher’s smile lingered longer on Admiral Janeway than on her other superiors. That the wry tilt to that smile signalled affection and respect. That she kept to protocol anyway, out of the same affection and respect.

To notice the row of hide-bound literary volumes that sat looking comfortably used on a shelf in Beverly Crusher’s office. To notice that they were more accessible to her desk than the case of pristine medical texts.

To notice that elegant, film-noir-gorgeous Beverly Crusher smelled not of perfume or flowers but of soap, sweat, and a frank, practical men’s deodorant.

To notice, in short, that Beverly Crusher might be a woman worth wanting.

*

‘You know,’ B’Elanna had said one day as they sat on her wide porch, watching Miral scramble up a tree. ‘They call her the Dancing Doctor.’ A repressed smile twitched on her lips as she sipped her raktajino, arching an eyebrow. How on earth had she guessed?

‘And you know, B’Elanna, there’s more than one grey eminence at the Daystrom who calls _you_ an incorrigible gossip.’ The flash of anger and fear in B’Elanna’s predictable eyes was match point to Kathryn, who grinned, giving her friend’s shoulder a patronizing pat. ‘I tell them otherwise, of course. For now.’ B’Elanna took the warning well, for a Klingon.

*

‘Beverly asked after you,’ Jean-Luc deadpanned a few weeks later over Earl Grey and a pile of reports on the new Romulan embassy. ‘She was _quite_ put out that you missed your last round of inspections at Medical.’ He was smirking, the old bastard.

Well. Let him.

*

As a matter of tradition, she danced with Tom Paris on First Contact Day. In the semiprivacy afforded by a very able horn section, he dipped her low and whispered, ‘So, who is he?’ Somehow, even after all these years, she never expected Tom to read her as well as he did. Without missing a beat, she whirled in his arms, trusted herself to his agile strength, and vaulted across his back.

‘ _She_ , if you must know, Captain,’ she grinned, swinging back into his deft hold, ‘is none of your damned business.’ Three swift measures more and the song had ended. She kissed his cheek and left him on the dance floor, looking as if his brain had shortcircuited. And for that matter, she thought, smiling to herself, it probably had.

*

She nursed a hangover one morning after a reception celebrating the Voyager Medical Project’s fifth anniversary. She wobbled across the terra cotta tiles of her brightly lit kitchen, reaching automatically for coffee things, squinting against the light. Light everywhere – tall windows in every available wall, her attempt at combating the claustrophobia that had antagonized her since _Voyager_ ’s return. She opened the French doors that lined the south wall of the open-plan flat, telling herself it was her hangover that needed the fresh air.

The cat wound himself around her ankles, chirping quietly as though he recognized her weakened state. She sighed. She felt suddenly exhausted. Emptying her French press into a massive mug – _Starfleet Academy Class of 2354: Reach for the Stars!_ – she felt more than exhausted. She felt damaged. Old. She told herself it was only the hangover. You deliberately poison yourself, you suffer. Not terribly convincing, but an excuse all the same. She sighed onto her couch with her coffee.

She’d spent the evening in close conversation with Doctor Crusher over what had evidently been one too many glasses of champagne. She smiled vaguely – and painfully – at the memory. At glass one, they’d been professional enough, Vidiian-phage this and nanoprobes that; glass three brought the revelation of their common interest in Irish literature; glass five closed a heated debate about the relationship of Edmund Spenser’s poetry to his politics and opened a helpless mutual giggle-fit over Alynna Nechayev’s stern but hopeless effort to teach Jean-Luc the foxtrot.

Yes, her affections had flared brightly that evening. It was pleasant to enjoy it privately, without anyone around to offer a knowing eyebrow or a wry joke. Pleasant just to feel it, to be allowed desire, to allow it to herself. To have a crush, as it were. To daydream. And, she noted with idle interest, pleasant that it did not come with the stabbing aches and wild yearnings of her twenties and thirties.

Alas, even the damned cat had a glare to offer as he leapt up beside her on the couch. Jealousy, perhaps. A cat needs his spinster, after all. ‘Don’t look at me that way, Maestro,’ she growled. ‘You were a stray before, and you can be a stray again. Anyway, if you’d ever seen her cheekbones, you’d understand.’

*

And so, when one day she literally bumped into Doctor Crusher in the replimat at Central Command, she smiled and said ‘Kathryn’ to the doctor’s ‘Admiral,’ and invited her to her office for a cup of coffee.

Somewhere between their first shared coffee, its transformation into a routine, and the new habit of semiregular dinners at Jean-Luc’s well-laid table, it came out that Beverly had a house in the South Downs, where she’d be spending her September. Kathryn found herself admitting that she, too, had put in for an overdue month’s leave. She let Beverly believe that it was September she’d requested, and promptly spent an hour on the comm calling in favors, scrambling schedules, and resigning herself to a long August of hard work.

And now here she was, across a shared kitchen table from her striking colleague, a dull ache in every particle of her body, dirty and exhausted, poring over the finer points of aerodynamics. Battered, but without that damaged feeling. And she found she didn’t mind the close corridors and poky little rooms and creaky aged floors of Beverly’s home. As long, that is, as she spent most of her day in the workshop, fiddling with her flying machine, or out on the downs trying to coax it into the air.

The glider had been Beverly’s idea. Kathryn had started to go stir-crazy after a single day of reading in a garden chair. Another thing, beyond Wilde and Beckett and Fionnuala O’Flaherty’s more provocative verses, that they shared in common: their impatience for remaining too long at rest. For the first time in her life, Kathryn had resolved to leave her work behind, and by day three she’d grown resentful enough of the solace Beverly took in her research to start snapping needlessly at her new friend.

On day four, after a tense dinner that had Kathryn wondering if she’d been wise to accept the invitation at all, Beverly surprised her by dropping a heavy pile of books on the coffee table in front of her with a matter-of-fact thud.

‘What’s this?’ Kathryn asked shortly, irritated at the sense that she was being taken care of. Beverly cocked a gentle eyebrow. Feeling guilty, she inclined her head in apology.

‘These belonged to an old friend,’ Beverly said in a tone that let Kathryn know that the old friend had been Jack Crusher. But an empathetic smile accompanied the tone. Tucking a stray shock of hair behind her ear, Beverly bit her lip. Was she nervous? ‘I thought you might like a project. When you told me about Leonardo’s glider this morning, I saw this glint in your eyes – oh come on, don’t try to deny it!’ She was nervous, yes, because she was also flirting. Well then.

Kathryn ran her thumb along the row of spines. Several issues of a journal called _Aerodynamics Quarterly_ , a history of flight in early America, a handful of hobbyist’s guides. And a dense academic biography of Leonardo da Vinci. She leafed through this last. Its rich illustrations, lovingly reproduced in high-resolution color, sent a nostalgic pulse directly to her heart. Wind. Speed. Aeronautical mechanics. Her cheeks flushed. She looked up.

‘So this old friend – he liked flying machines?’ Beverly’s smile lacked the regret Kathryn expected.

‘He piloted twentieth-century airplanes for the village airshow every year. Always talked about building a glider on the ancient model, but never got around to it. Preferred the grease and noise of an engine, he said.’ Kathryn nodded, thinking of Tom and his automobiles. The thought made her feel suddenly close to Jack Crusher, made her wish, unaccountably, that she’d known him.

‘And did you fly with him?’ she asked softly. Beverly laughed, seating herself next to Kathryn on the couch. Rather close. Kathryn ignored her own response to the warm smell of garlic on her friend’s hands, the sense memory of her effortless movements through the kitchen a few hours earlier.

‘Oh, god, no. He’d beg me, every year. But, Kathryn, there’s not a damn thing in the world that could convince me to sit in the open air thousands of feet off the ground with nothing but a flimsy pair of wings and a rudimentary propeller between myself and a fiery death.’ Kathryn raised her eyes to meet Beverly’s. She was, yes, awfully close.

‘Fear of heights?’

‘Like you wouldn’t believe.’ Kathryn smiled mischievously, and it felt like a risk.

‘Well. We’ll see about _that_ ,’ she ventured. Risk, or a promise. She covered her friend’s hands, resting gracefully latticed between her knees, with one of her own. Risk again. ‘Thank you, Beverly.’

Beverly held her gaze, squeezed her fingertips, and grinned. Risk, and reward.

Well.

Beverly cleared her throat and moved almost imperceptibly away. ‘Rashmi, down the road, is an engineer – she’s got an industrial replicator in her workshop. I’m sure she’d be happy to help you with supplies. She’s, ah... _tough_ , but she loves an esoteric project. And I suspect you’ll find all the tools you need in the attic.’

It was more than a generous attempt to boost morale, this glider project, Kathryn thought. Neighbors. Attics. Jack’s books. It was an invitation into Beverly’s life. She’d be damned if she wouldn’t take it.

‘Well!’ she said brightly, standing. ‘Construction will commence first thing in the morning. For now, a more pressing matter: scotch or bourbon?’ Beverly scoffed, gamely taking up the change of tone.

‘Oh, please. As though I have a choice. I know as well as you do it’ll be bourbon.’ Kathryn arched a challenging eyebrow.

‘That so?’

A more secretive smile than before. A smile she hadn’t seen before. ‘It’s clear as day there’s more Indiana than Ireland in you, Kathryn Janeway. It’ll always be bourbon.’

Always? Talk about reward.

She marched into the kitchen and pretended she didn’t notice the tremor in her hand as she reached for a bottle. Or if she noticed, she told herself it was the thrill of anticipating flight.

*

It wasn’t in hobbyist manuals that Kathryn finally found the solution to her wing-strut difficulty.

She’d let Beverly talk her into taking a day off from battering her body against the unforgiving earth, in exchange for a promise that the doctor would stow away her stack of journals and reports from Medical.

‘Today, Beverly, we are going to live as though we are neither obsessive nor compulsive,’ she’d declared over coffee.

Beverly had turned from her position leaning in the open doorway, the stark beauty of her almost outrageous against the backdrop of the garden’s wilderness. ‘I’d never have pegged you for such a radical, Kathryn Janeway.’

‘Mm,’ she nodded decisively. ‘Today, you and I are going to go for a walk. We will take our time over lunch. We will _amble_ through town. We may even be forced to consider the possibility of a pint. Maybe even two. Agreed?’

‘You may be a radical, Admiral,’ she smiled around the lip of her demitasse. ‘But I always follow orders. Agreed.’ In bluejeans and a loosely-buttoned flannel shirt, her hair tied carelessly at the nape of her neck, she was a far cry from the labcoated study in professional efficiency that Kathryn had gotten to know at Medical. In the course of two weeks of Kathryn’s injuries and Beverly’s cooking, Beverly’s research and Kathryn’s spontaneous theoretical contributions, that casually flirtatious tone had stitched itself into their easy, everyday intimacy. It was becoming difficult to remember the perfunctory hour Admiral Janeway used to spend touring Doctor Crusher’s laboratory.

She shrugged into her leather jacket – Beverly had replicated it for her, as a joke, along with a truly absurd (if highly useful) pair of aviator’s goggles. The goggles, Kathryn could leave behind, but she was beginning to rather fancy the jacket. Red it may be, but deep and warm and a far cry from her uniform, and – though she’d never say it aloud – she relished the sense that it made her look just a little bit dangerous.

‘So, Doctor? Ready for the most perilous away mission of your career?’

They did amble, and they did linger over their lunch – a fine leek and sausage stew that Beverly vowed to reproduce. Bold with her midday pint, Kathryn threaded her arm through Beverly’s as they stepped out of the pub into the cool damp of the day. Her friend’s elbow squeezed hers as though absently, and Kathryn let herself enjoy the knowing smile of a passerby or two. If they thought them a couple, so be it. She glanced up at her friend’s face, her wild hair, and thought that, yes, they must be very striking. Beautiful. She knew what they looked like together, and she enjoyed being watched.

They wandered off the high street into a warren of alleyways, in search of the antique bookseller Beverly had promised Kathryn the first time she’d described the house in the Downs.

The wooden sign read simply, ‘Books,’ and dangled old-fashionedly from a wrought-iron brace. The shop was splendid. Kathryn inhaled deeply, the warm dusty smell of the place telling her more clearly than anything else in the past weeks just how wonderfully far from Starfleet she really was.

She thrummed her fingertips over a row of spines, letting impulse guide her, moving slowly through the stacks, touching everything. Beverly eventually wandered off as she stood contemplating the value of a mildly battered first edition of Fionnuala O’Flaherty’s final book of verse, the rare 2267 _Concerning Flight_ , complete with the even rarer woodcut frontispiece. She admired the fine cut, glancing over her shoulder before running her thumb affectionately over the contours she knew so well from her own facsimile copy. Two tall female figures, splendidly nude, faced away from one another, bracketing the page. The tips of their wide wings touched, forming an elegant arch over the title. ‘ _Damn_ ,’ Tom Paris had said when he’d leafed idly through the book in her _Voyager_ ready room a decade ago. ‘Only thing better than a woman’s a woman with wings, huh?’ Kathryn’s sentiments exactly. She opened the book at random, read a few artfully archaized stanzas detailing the aviform pelvic arch of one of the poet’s many lovers. Thinking of Beverly, in the kitchen in the morning. Swaying sleepily in her satin nightshift, her hips unmindful of Kathryn’s careful eyes.

‘Kathryn, look at this,’ came Beverly’s voice from across the room. Kathryn snapped O’Flaherty shut, surreptitiously reshelving it in a sudden fit of embarrassment.

She navigated shelves and tables and floor-stacked piles of books to peer over Beverly’s shoulder – a question of standing on tiptoe, as she often forgot. ‘What is it?’

‘A history of that reconstruction of the Globe in London.’

‘Oh,’ said Kathryn, dismissive. ‘I was never really much for theatricals.’

Beverly snorted.

‘This from Arachnia, Queen of the Spider People.’ Kathryn winced. She knew she should long ago have used her rank to render _Captain Proton_ classified. ‘Oh, relax. It’s flight performance I’m interested in here, not the Shakespearean variety. Look.’ She pointed, handing the volume to Kathryn.

The page, complete with diagrams, described the theatre’s sixteenth-century support structures. Suddenly, Kathryn understood. Wide-eyed, she looked up at Beverly. ‘Oh my god.’ She looked back at the page. ‘Of _course_ ,’ she breathed, stupefied.

Thirty years of temporal mechanics, quantum thermodynamics, and warp plasma algorithms, and she’d been defeated by a problem that wouldn’t have given her teenage self a moment’s pause on a high school physics exam.

Two notched beams set at the appropriate angle to one another, united by a single strut, bearing a load several times what either could on its own. The load, up to a point, only strengthening the joint. Compensate for the highly variable pressures that come with short-range, low-altitude flight, and hey, presto.

She spoke her thoughts aloud to Beverly, gesturing animatedly, imperiling the precarious codexical architecture surrounding her. ‘Christ, Bev. I’ve been trying to build an ancient flying machine on twenty-fourth century principles. _Christ_ , but I’m a fool. Ditch the auto-modulating hinges. Ditch the multiply integrated self-sealing stem-bolts. Build a bloody _triangle_.’ She remembered one of B’Elanna’s axioms. ‘Let the simplest mechanics bear the most critical burdens. This same structure in duranium would take a ball-and-socket joint, right?’

‘With some wiring to support it, sure. Like a rotator cuff,’ Beverly nodded, shrugging for emphasis. Whether it was the sudden respect in Beverly’s voice for the anatomy of her plane, or simply her own exhilaration at the quick and easy solution to her problem, or some other unknowable force, Kathryn never determined. But she cast the book hastily aside, wrapped her arms around Beverly’s neck – another matter of tiptoes – and kissed her. Full on the mouth, in front of a shopful of bemused villagers.

Pulling back, she simply grinned. ‘ _Thank you_ , Beverly.’

Eyes wide, Beverly gave a wary smile. ‘... Any time, Kathryn.’ She ran a thumb across her lips. ‘Any time.’

*

‘Rashmi! Damn it, Rashmi, where’ve you gone?’ Kathryn scanned the workshop with no attempt to disguise the wildness of her enthusiasm. The fierce little engineer emerged from underneath the solar turbine she was constructing for Alfriston’s central power plant. Just like her stubborn self, Kathryn thought, to pursue solar energy in Britain.

‘Still not dead?’ she quipped, characteristically dry, as she wiped her grease-coated hands on her canvas trousers. Kathryn clambered over a workbench, proffering the book, her thumb marking the place.

‘Oh, very much alive, Rashmi. Look. Beverly solved the support problem.’ Rashmi took the book, skepticism all over her wide, dark eyes. Kathryn watched her own realization of a few hours earlier dawn across Rashmi’s features.

‘Well, fuck me with a hyperspanner,’ she declared, scrubbing a hand through her close-cropped, grey-dusted hair. ‘ _Fuck_ , Kat-Kat. The Academy should bloody rescind our degrees for this.’ Casually vulgar self-deprecation or no, her clipped accent was suffused with warmth.

‘Don’t I know it. But I won’t tell if you don’t. Come on. We’ve got wings to rebuild.’

Rashmi brushed a pile of miscellanea from her primary workstation and brought up a wide, blank drafting screen. Pulling a stylus from behind her ear, she tossed another, seemingly magicked out of nowhere, to Kathryn. They diagrammed swiftly. Fought amicably about pressure differentials. Programmed the massive replicator; fought about that, too. Paused at dusk for Kathryn’s coffee and Rashmi’s cigarette. Stretched canvas and welded duranium until well after dark. The same quick, mutual work that had brought them swiftly close over the past weeks.

It was well past midnight when they slumped on the steps of Rashmi’s porch with bottles of the engineer’s strong home-brewed ale, admiring the frame of a new flying machine that had grown gradually off the ground. Rashmi offered one of her thin black cigarettes and – oh, to hell with it – Kathryn accepted. As she cupped her hands around Rashmi’s lighter, time folded and she was at once here, in the chill night of an English autumn, and huddled on the roof of her Academy barracks, three decades gone.

‘Damn, that’s fantastic,’ she breathed, inhaling deeply. Suddenly, she laughed, leaning back on her elbows. ‘Christ, Rashmi, I almost forgot. I kissed her.’ Habitually impassive, Rashmi cocked an eyebrow. Deep surprise, for her.

‘And?’

Kathryn chuckled, tilting her head back to try a smoke ring. Modest success. ‘Well. I think she liked it.’ Rashmi rolled her eyes, knocking back the rest of her ale.

‘Of course she did.’ To Kathryn’s knitted brow, she replied, as though explaining a complicated problem to a small child, ‘You’re bloody fucking splendid, Kat-Kat. Anyone would want you.’ She cocked her jaw at the glider as she exhaled, haloing the moon in smoke. ‘All you’re missing is a pair of wings.’

*

Face flushed, hair tousled, and entirely unbruised, Kathryn threw open the front door just before noon two days later and called out exultantly, ‘Beverly! Where are you?’ The warm, slow-simmering smell of leeks hit her hard. ‘Christ, that smells good, I’m starving – Beverly!’

In a tone of resigned concern, Beverly replied from the kitchen, ‘Do I need my medkit?’

Kathryn rounded the corner in a whirl of exhilaration, unwinding her scarf and propping her goggles on her forehead.

‘Look at me!’ She presented herself for inspection, grinning like a fool. ‘Completely, one-hundred-percent injury-free. Flight plan followed to the letter. Well. Give or take a half-mile – and a terrified sheep or two.’ Beverly caught her enthusiasm instantly, and before she could think about it, Kathryn had been caught into a hug, lifted, twirled, and redeposited, slightly dizzy, on the tiled floor. She brushed her hair from her eyes, still smiling, calling her heartrate a simple aftereffect of flight. Fetching a bowl of stew, she caught her breath and let Beverly deposit her at the table and run a scanner over her, out of habit. But her heart was still out on the wind. ‘Oh, Beverly, it was _glorious_. Glorious. Mm, god, this is heavenly, by the way. And I put the _Fionnuala_ down just a little way from here, in just the same fine shape she was in when we left the ground over Alfriston.’

Beverly laughed, propping her chin on her hands. If Kathryn wasn’t mistaken, that was admiration in her eyes. And not a little mischief with it. ‘The _Fionnuala_ , eh?’

‘I figured since she’s not only complete but still intact, she deserved a name at last. Fionnuala O’Flaherty was the first thing to occur to me.’ Settling back into her chair and kicking her feet up, indulging in a bit of the pilot’s native arrogance, Kathryn licked her spoon and didn’t even try to make the assertion sound casual.

‘Women with wings,’ Beverly sighed, biting her lip.

Kathryn cocked her head, flashed her eyes, and grinned. ‘Yes. Women with wings.’

*

Beverly smiled broadly as she walked, spreading her arms invitingly to the wind, her hair bright against the dim English morning. Her baggy sweater pressed to the shape of her with each gust. Crouched under a wing in the grass, Kathryn watched appreciatively, grinning around the wrench between her teeth as she made final adjustments in preparation for _Fionnuala_ ’s twelfth flight. She rested in her wheeled chassis, looking attractively confident, for a machine. Kathryn was hard-pressed to choose between Beverly’s girlish joy and _Fionnuala_ ’s sleekly coiled potential, for a glorious sight. But then, why choose?

‘Hey!’ She skidded on her heels down the grassy bluff. Her ponytail whipping in the wind, Beverly turned and smiled like the sun. Kathryn took her arm and beamed up at her. ‘Beverly. Come with me.’ That earned an incredulous laugh.

‘Not a chance. Not in a million years.’ Kathryn edged closer, looked right up into those big grey eyes. Beverly swatted the goggles resting on her forehead. ‘No, crazy. Just no.’

‘Come.’ She ran her hands along Beverly’s arms. ‘I want to show you what this is like.’ Beverly stepped back, refusal tensing her whole body. But she was smiling, and that wasn’t nothing.

‘Kathryn, are you insane? After all the times I had to repair you last week? And anyway, that thing – okay, okay, _Fionnuala_ – she’s only built for one.’ Kathryn shook her head, taking Beverly’s hand.

‘She’s built for one, but she’ll carry two.’ Beverly’s jaw dropped, but before she could issue further protests, Kathryn waved her off. ‘What do you think I’ve been doing every morning? I’ve taken a hundred kilos of equipment with me on every flight, to be sure. She’ll carry two, and never mind it for a moment.’ She smiled impulsively, chucking Beverly under the chin. ‘She may look delicate, but she’s the farthest thing from fragile.’ Beverly blushed at the compliment. Well, good.

‘Kathryn –’ Impulse carrying her all the way, she laid a finger over Beverly’s lips.

‘Listen to me now, and listen very carefully. I will never put you in danger. I will never knowingly risk causing you even the most superficial harm. As long as you’re with me, you will be perfectly safe.’ Beverly hesitated, drawing a deep breath. Kathryn withdrew her hand and gave a puckish smile. ‘For fuck’s sake, Bev, I flew a hundred and fifty people to the far side of the Delta Quadrant and back. I think I can carry you safely over a few miles of countryside.’ Hesitation graded into laughter.

‘I don’t doubt it, Kathryn. I don’t doubt it.’ Kathryn took one step closer. The toes of their boots touched.

‘So trust me, Beverly Crusher.’ She softened her voice. ‘Trust me.’ Beverly thrust out her jaw, spreading her hands and casting her eyes all around as though hoping for aid from some unexpected quarter. Finally, she gave a rueful smile and her shoulders sank.

‘God damn it.’ Before Kathryn could respond, she was caught in a tight hug, her friend’s lips close against her ear. ‘But hear me, now. If I die today, I swear on everything I’ve ever known that I will return from the beyond just to kill you, Kathryn Janeway. Don’t you doubt that.’ Kathryn pulled back, holding Beverly by the shoulders and laughing.

‘Not for a minute. Now. Come.’ She all but dragged Beverly back up the hill and across a plateau that bore several scars from its brief career as _Fionnuala_ ’s runway.

Beverly warily inspected the wingstruts and their rotator cuffs, as though contemplating surgery. Kathryn slashed the lines at tail and nose that bound her flying machine to the ground.

She palmed Beverly’s cheek and kissed her forehead before scrambling over the chassis and vaulting into her seat. Beverly followed, looking perplexed as she stood on a wheel, white-kuckled hands gripping a strut for balance.

‘Uh, Kath? Where do I go?’ Kathryn shifted, set her feet on their pedals, and patted the seat between her thighs, grinning. ‘Jesus effing... Phew. You’re sure this will work? Wow. Okay.’ With precisely none of her accustomed grace, Beverly climbed over the low lip of the fuselage and tumbled into Kathryn’s lap. Kathryn poked her in the ribs and cracked wise about dancing doctors brought low, hoping that getting her terrified friend to join in her thrilled laughter would calm her nerves. After a little cackling, cussing, and the odd woefully misplaced elbow, Beverly was nestled securely between her legs, leaning back against her in _Fionnuala_ ’s cockpit.

Kathryn reached back and pulled the canvas harness over their heads, securing it to the seat between Beverly’s thighs. She nudged Beverly’s feet into place alongside her own on the pedals. Leaned back, pulling gently on Beverly’s shoulders until she lay securely against her. Lay her hands on Beverly’s, where they fiercely gripped the sides of the cockpit, prised them carefully off and, wrapping her arms around Beverly’s ribs, rested them against her belly. Soothed their violent shaking with slow thumbstrokes.

‘See?’ she murmured against Beverly’s ear. ‘Safe.’ Beverly nodded tensely. _Fionnuala_ rocked gently in the high hill wind.

‘Right. Safe.’ Holding her quietly, their fingers latticed together, Kathryn waited until she felt the caged-bird rapidity of Beverly’s heartbeat slow from terror to simple apprehension. Slowly, she moved her hands to the levers on either side of her. Pulled her goggles down over her eyes. Gave Beverly’s shoulder a swift nuzzle and whispered, ‘Ready?’ Beverly gripped her knees so hard it hurt.

‘Not in the least,’ she breathed. ‘By which I mean, as ready as I’ll ever be. Let’s go before I retrieve my good sense from wherever you’ve banished it to.’

Kathryn pressed all the considerable strength of quadricep and calf into one pedal, then the other. _Fionnuala_ trundled gently forward, then gained speed. After a moment, Kathryn felt the power of a lifelong dancer’s legs added to her own. _Fionnuala_ hummed, gathering more momentum than she’d ever known. Even as her feet grew surer on the pedals, Beverly’s hands gripped Kathryn’s legs with all the more excruciating force. The strong north wind whipped their hair together, and Kathryn’s stomach leapt as _Fionnuala_ felt it in her wings. The wheels were light on the ground as they sped to the edge of the bluff.

The wind rose. The ground dropped. Beverly screamed. They were flying.

She pulled up the wheel carriage, laughing with the thrill. Her hands quick and careful on the levers, she let _Fionnuala_ choose her wind, giving only gentle guidance. But Beverly was steel-stiff against her, eyes clamped shut, faintly whimpering. Her hands busy with the wingworks, Kathryn hummed nonverbal reassurances, to no effect. Hugged Beverly’s feet with her own. Nothing but a terror-stricken shiver. She planted a kiss on her temple – the smallest release of tension.

‘Open your eyes.’ A violent headshake. Another kiss, behind an ear. ‘Open your eyes, Beverly Crusher.’

A strangled ‘Hrm!’ and then, ‘Why?’

‘Because I say so.’ Kathryn kissed her ear again. And then she bit her. Hard.

Beverly yowled in shocked protest – but her eyes were open. Frantic, she dug her fingers still harder into Kathryn’s knees as _Fionnuala_ banked to catch the eddies that would give her altitude.

‘It’s okay. I’ve got you. _Fionnuala_ ’s got us both. Now look. Not down. Straight ahead.’ The struggling sun showed the coast white against the wild expanse of a choppy sea. The sky and the sea and the land in the blue and grey and green of all English poetry – the sight distracted Beverly even from her own fear. Kathryn cajoled _Fionnuala_ into skimming the coastline, and as Beverly’s gaze shifted to watch the downs receding behind them, her deathgrip on Kathryn’s knees finally relaxed. ‘ _Thank_ you.’

They glided straight beyond the headland, out over the sea; Kathryn tugged lightly on the drag lever.  _Fionnuala_ pointed her nose and dived. Beverly slapped her hands against the low cockpit walls, eyes locked on the white-capped waves, and spat a frantic whispered litany of curses or prayers – Kathryn wasn’t sure. She pressed her cheek to Beverly’s.

‘Trust me, Beverly Crusher.’ When the glider had dipped low enough, she caught the warm updraft that hugged the water – Kathryn pulled back hard, and they climbed and climbed. As they wheeled slowly back toward the coast, as twenty centuries of poetry spoke back to them from the chalky cliffs, and the green of England rose to greet them, Beverly slowly, slowly leaned into Kathryn, tilted back her head, and began to laugh.

When _Fionnuala_ took it upon herself to turn a gentle banking turn into a spiral that demanded all of Kathryn’s effort to recuperate, Beverly actually _whooped_. Kathryn grinned – let her think it was intentional. Her hands were firm but gentle on Kathryn’s thighs, and the backward glances of her wild, wide eyes made Kathryn’s stomach drop as fast as any wheeling dive of _Fionnuala_ ’s could.

The downs rose up gently before them, and Kathryn pointed to the field where she’d last crashed. ‘How’s that for landing? On purpose, this time!’

She didn’t bother with wheels –  _Fionnuala_ preferred to land on her belly. Kathryn drew lazy descending circles, the wind cooperative and kind. Carefully, she lined up her path, calculated attitude in her head, a business half of swift approximation and half of instinct – the farthest thing from a starship. She pushed one lever slowly forward, and Beverly shrieked again as the ground rose up alarmingly.

‘Brace yourself!’ she called cheerfully. On impact, they jerked hard against each other and the harness, and slammed back against the seat as _Fionnuala_ skidded a hundred yards or more before coming to a gently rocking stop.

Beverly sagged against her – and began once more to laugh, soft breath-catching incredulous relief at first, then louder, deep in her throat. Kathryn smiled as she prised her fingers from the levers, lifted her goggles, stretched her arms over her head, and let them fall back down across Beverly’s shoulders.

‘Kathryn.’ A little hysterical edge to her exhilarated voice. She took Kathryn’s hands in hers. ‘Oh, Kathryn. _Oh_ , Kathryn.’

In absolute contentment, Kathryn rested her head back against the seat, feeling Beverly’s weight and her laughter, and her own exhilarated flush, the tightness in her chest that was both flight and this woman.

Suddenly, her hands were released, and Beverly fumbled with the harness catch, and lifted it over their heads. Twisting in her seat, her still-wild eyes fixed on Kathryn’s.

‘ _Kathryn_.’ And kissed her, hard. Kathryn grunted, pushing back against her. But Beverly’s hands were on her shoulders, pinning her against the seat, long legs fumbling to turn in the tight space, teeth knocking and tearing her lips, a whimper as she caught a lever in the ribs. She guided Kathryn’s hands to her hips and settled, straddling her. ‘ _Kathryn_.’ Now it was all soft lips, tip of tongue, fingertips in her hair, and – her mind finally catching up with her body – Kathryn gripped her hard, arching up into her, kissing, biting, kissing again. Beverly’s hand gripped the back of her neck, and Kathryn moaned against her lips.

Then suddenly she pulled back. Never breaking her lock on Kathryn’s eyes, she crossed her wrists at her waist and pulled her sweater over her head. She threw it onto the grass. Looking up at her, dumbstruck, Kathryn watched Beverly’s fingers as they carefully unbuttoned and discarded another layer. She settled, fingertips running along Kathryn’s neck, her jaw, her hairline, in just her bluejeans and a Starfleet-issue tank. The chill puckered her bare shoulders, tightened the weathered flesh there, rippled the spill of freckles.

The drama of her hair, coming loose, white-streaked falls framing her face. The sudden slenderness of her against the sky, against the brighter grey of _Fionnuala_ ’s forward frame. A woman with wings.

Kathryn let her slide the jacket from her shoulders, and then her sweater over her head, so that she shivered in her bra and the brush of the wind. She ran a fingertip from the hollow of Beverly’s clavicle to the neckline of her tank. Another fierce kiss and she gasped.

‘I want you,’ Beverly whispered with some of her earlier fevered laughter. ‘I want you.’ Kisses along her cheekbones, the curve of her ear, fingertips in her hair, fingertips along the sensitive line of exposed skin at her waistline. Her back arched, and fingertips on her lower spine made her gasp again. Beverly’s low laugh was warm against her throat, and then her lips. ‘I want you, Kathryn Janeway’ – lips warm on hers - ‘I’ve wanted you – mmf – for five years’ – her darting, clever tongue – ‘and now that I’ve said it, I want’ – teeth on her upper lip – ‘to just’ – and her lower – ‘ _keep saying it._ ’

‘Keep saying it, Beverly. Say it as often as you wish,’ Kathryn gasped. Shuddering, she lay her temple against Beverly’s jaw, hands flat against her back, trying to catch her breath.

As she regained something like sentience, Kathryn slid her hands beneath Beverly’s tank, tugging her closer. Kissed her clavicle. And raked her teeth all the length of the knotted tendon that stretched from her freckled shoulder to the place behind her ear where she’d kissed her in the sky. She ran her hands over Beverly’s slender rib cage, her knuckles down across her stomach – taut with close to six decades of dance, and soft with age and long-ago maternity. Paradox, and a revelation. Her thumbs across Beverly’s nipples brought a whimper wholly unlike the ones she’d uttered on the wind. Her hips rocked in Kathryn’s lap, and warm against her ear she whispered, ‘I want you.’

Her voice, strained and incoherent, made Kathryn’s mouth go dry. ‘Tell me,’ she purred, her work-roughened hand palming Beverly’s breast, calloused fingers rolling her nipple. ‘Tell me what you want,’ savagely biting her earlobe for emphasis.

‘This – I want this,’ she whimpered, arching into Kathryn’s hands. ‘This, and –’ speechless with Kathryn’s mouth against her throat, Beverly simply rose on her knees and jerked open the waistband of her jeans. ‘Your hands. Everywhere. Please. Kathryn.’

Her lips came level with Beverly’s belly, and she lifted the thin cotton of the tank to kiss her chill-textured skin. Beverly whined and leaned forward, gripping _Fionnuala_ ’s wingstruts above Kathryn’s head for balance.

She wanted time, wanted languour and slowness, but Beverly quaked with vulnerable desire, and the thought came to Kathryn suddenly that they were in an open field, in the cockpit of a glider, bare to the sky. She laughed against her lover’s soft, soap-smelling skin, and pulled her bluejeans down around her knees. In a fitful struggle, Beverly wriggled her long legs free.

Teeth closing on the base of her ribcage, one hand on her hip, guiding her closer, Kathryn slipped her fingers under the waistband of Beverly’s standard-issue briefs, smiling against her lover’s skin at the low whine in her lover’s throat. She murmured wordlessly through her kisses, and her fingers slid slowly across Beverly’s slick skin, then faster with the urging of Beverly’s quick hips. She dipped inside and curled her knuckles and Beverly cried out.

Kathryn slid forward in her pilot’s seat and raked that plain gray cotton down with her free hand, hooked her arm around her lover’s thigh for balance. Beverly was warm against her wind-chapped lips, and when her tongue ran slow and firm across her lover’s clit, she screamed and slapped the wingstrut with her open palm. A fierce, demanding hand gripped the back of her head, and Kathryn matched the tempo of her fingers and her tongue to the swiftly jagged thrusts of her lover’s hips.

‘Kathryn – Kathryn – harder, Kathryn – oh, Jesus, Kathryn, yes, _harder, Kathryn – Ka – ah!_ ’ Beverly tensed and froze above her; Kathryn’s fingertips pressed hard; unable to breathe, she swirled her frantic tongue until a tight contraction gripped her hand and Beverly’s voice cried wordlessly against the wind. She shuddered and her hand released its hold as she rocked forward, and Kathryn gasped for air. She braced her feet and slid back up in her pilot’s seat to wrap an arm around her lover, her fingers still massaging gently deep inside her. She kissed wherever her lips landed, shoulder, sternum, crook of elbow, the salty sylvan taste of her.

Beverly slumped into her lap at last, wrapping her arms around her neck, forehead falling against hers, and Kathryn withdrew her careful fingers and kissed her lips.

‘My god,’ her lover breathed. ‘My god, Kathryn.’ She kissed her weakly. ‘My god.’

And suddenly, leaning back, hitching up her briefs, Beverly laughed. ‘Oh, _no_ ,’ she chuckled, covering her mouth with one hand as the other reached up to where Kathryn’s goggles were still strapped to the top of her head. Kathryn blushed ferociously. And burst out laughing all the same, quaking in Beverly’s arms, burying her burning face in her neck. ‘Oh, Kathryn,’ she teased, cupping her cheek, settling the goggles back across her eyes. ‘My aviator,’ with a giggling kiss on the tip of her nose, ‘my brave pilot.’

Kathryn tugged the band from around her temples and tossed the goggles overboard, scrubbing her hands through the mess that Beverly and the wind had made of her tightly bobbed hair. Choking back a sob of laughter, she wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand and sighed. ‘Oh, Beverly, god help me. Will you still have me, absurd as I am?’

‘Will I?’ Beverly asked, kissing her, something almost sinister darkening her eyes. She hooked a knee between Kathryn’s legs, making her gasp. ‘Will I still have the brave pilot who kept me safe, who flew me out across the ocean and back again?’ She rocked her knee and drew Kathryn’s lips each in turn between her own. Good Christ, but the woman knew what she was about. ‘Will I still have the woman who kissed me in the sky, and fucked me senseless from her pilot’s seat on the good solid earth?’ A new edge in her usual wry tone, and Kathryn writhed against her for it. ‘I think,’ Beverly murmured, running her tongue along the arch of Kathryn’s ear – good _Christ_ – ‘I think yes. I think I will.’

And then her hands pinned Kathryn’s to the seat behind her, and her lips and teeth and tongue tracked hungrily down her throat, across her sternum, over the rise of her belly. Releasing her hands, Beverly yanked her warm wool trousers down, underpants and all, and she shivered against the wind and the cold leather of the seat. But cold lost its relevance when Beverly’s hasty lips closed around her clit, and Kathryn’s head fell back and her hips thrust and she cried out, bracing her feet against _Fionnuala_ ’s forward fuselage, gripping a strut with one hand and Beverly’s hair with the other.

Pressure pulsed at her opening. Long fingers unfolded inside her. She cried out. Beverly’s name, a curse, a prayer, a meaningless howl, whatever. Her hips moved of their own accord, the wind whipped her hair, _Fionnuala_ rocked, and Beverly’s clever tongue and Beverly’s long, lithe, clever fingers and Beverly’s voice vibrating on her skin —— she cried out again, or was still crying out, over and over, as she clamped her thighs and bucked her hips and came.

Maybe she lost consciousness; maybe she just blinked. When she opened her eyes, Beverly was grinning up at her, raking her fingernails softly through the auburn net of Kathryn’s curls.

‘Christ almighty, Beverly Crusher,’ Kathryn breathed, half a grin tugging at her lips. The woman _certainly_ knew what she was about. She jerked her trousers back around her waist and tugged Beverly’s wrist. ‘Come here.’ She kissed her cheekbones, kissed the roots of her wild hair at each temple.

‘Hey,’ Beverly smiled, nestling into Kathryn’s arms. She let herself just feel that. For a long while. And never mind the wind and the cold and the open sky.

‘Beverly,’ she said at length. Her shoulders tensed at Kathryn’s sudden serious tone. ‘When we get back.’

‘To the house?’

‘San Francisco.’

‘Ah.’ Gazing up from under her lashes, utterly placid. ‘Yes?’

‘What then?’ Kathryn didn’t recognize the tension in her own voice. Beverly chuckled and reached up to thumb her cheek, closing her eyes against Kathryn’s shoulder.

‘Oh, I don’t know. Same as before, I suppose, only with riotous sex and morning snuggles.’ Kathryn barked a laugh.

‘Oh, please. When have you ever in your life had time for morning snuggles?’

‘Not often, it’s true.’ Beverly struck out a lazy balancing hand as _Fionnuala_ rocked, then curled back into Kathryn’s arms, closing her eyes. She could make herself surprisingly small. ‘So much for morning snuggles, then. But we can keep the riotous sex?’

Kathryn kissed her forehead. ‘Absolutely.’

‘Good,’ she murmured sleepily. She looked up, and sleepy or no, mischief was written all over her features. ‘I’ve always wanted an Admiral to fuck me across her desk.’ She brushed Kathryn’s smirking lips with a fingertip. ‘So glad I have you, Kathryn.’

‘You’d do well to remember your good luck, Doctor Crusher.’

She combed her fingers through Beverly’s hair, slow and grateful against the warm skin of her neck. ‘Cold,’ she complained almost inaudibly. Kathryn smiled, yanked her jacket out from under her, and drew it over them both.

‘Better?’

‘Mmmh.’ Beverly nuzzled her nose into the crook of Kathryn’s jaw, kissed her there. And fell asleep.

And there was Kathryn Janeway in an open field, in the cockpit of an archaic flying machine, pinned to her seat by the body of a half-naked, unconscious woman, trapped until that woman decided to wake.

Well, she thought, shifting gently, careful of Beverly and planting a kiss on her new lover’s hair, there were worse fates.

The sun broke out at noon to warm them. She saw a man with a dog walking far off in the distance. Never mind, she thought. All he sees is a peculiar pair of wings, rocking on a hill.

*

Kathryn woke to a freezing, damp October morning in her Mission district flat, and found herself alone but for the Maestro howling for his breakfast. She slumped against the pillows, faintly pine-scented from their recent contact with Beverly’s skin. So much for morning snuggles, indeed. She shivered and resigned herself to her lonely routine.

Her mind had been entirely absorbed by the minutia of her morning by the time she strode into her office and clipped her coffee order at the replicator. An object on her desk, an object which had not been there the day before, brought her up short.

The dead give-away of a rectangle wrapped in brown paper. Postmark: Alfriston. Kathryn lay her fingertips on the parcel, and finally exhaled.

A plain white card rested atop it, blank but for a quotation in an unmistakable hand.

_... still my poor heart’s fear of flying  
stayed not my wingèd lover’s fearless hands..._

Carefully, she unfolded the paper and eased the first edition of _Concerning Flight_ into her rather unfearless-feeling hands. She pressed it to her lips, smelling books and England.

She replicated a stand and opened the book to its frontispiece. She stood it on her desk, facing outward. Keep everyone guessing. And Beverly would laugh. The card, she tucked carefully into her uniform, next to her skin.

Flushed, she pulled up the morning’s business on her console screen. Her door chimed. Looking up, she found her morning appointment, precisely punctual with his padd and a gallant smile. ‘Good morning, Admiral! And welcome home!’

‘Good morning, Admiral,’ she smiled fondly. Gallant didn’t begin. He poured her coffee and his own, as always, and sat without invitation, as always – but today his hand froze halfway through the habitual gesture of passing her the padd. His eyes had snagged on O’Flaherty.

‘Ah.’ He pursed his lips, carefully admiring. ‘Splendid. Rather, that is, ah – wow, Admiral.’

‘Women with wings, Jean-Luc.’ She flashed the devilish smile she usually reserved for cadets. ‘Beware of them.’

He swallowed hard.

‘Indeed, Admiral.’ He cleared his throat; she winked. ‘Indeed.’

*


End file.
